Essays on Strategic Management 2 Article

Strategic Management IntroductionStrategic change is a major necessity for companies that want to survive in the competitive business world. The increased international competition as well as technological change is some of the reasons that companies introduce new corporate strategies for selling their products. One way that companies engage in strategic change is through acquisitions and collaborations (Markides, 2002 pp. 354). By forming alliances, the partners are able to improve their products and learn from one another. In the process of learning from one another, the strategic partners are able to exchange technological capabilities and skills for the benefit of the two organizations.

Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony and other companies offering mobile devices and applications have used various strategies to remain relevant in the market and to gain competitive advantage. Some of these strategies include company acquisitions, collaboration, and product innovation among others. Google and Microsoft’s Innovation Strategies for Wireless ProductsGoogle Company has diversified its products to include mobile wireless devices with an objective of getting more revenue and gaining huge market share in mobile products industry. The mobile phone products include Nexus One and Droid that contains the Android operating system.

For a customer to make a decision of buying mobile devices from Google, a lot of information needs to be availed to the customer (Burt, 2002 pp. 225). The customer must be aware of the unique features that are found in the Google mobile products as compared to what competitors in the market have to offer. A new product known as Android was developed and launched in October 2008. Android is a smart -phone. It is quite a popular product compared to some existing products such as Motorola Droid and the Nexus One.

Android is a new product compared to the existing product in the market and features advanced technology. The innovation in technology accords a customer an opportunity to learn new user friendly applications. Google has used the strategy of acquisition and collaboration as an attempt to gain competitive advantage in the market (Barney, 1997 pp. 96). One of the major acquisition be Google was the purchase of DocVerse company that was founded by some two former employees of Microsoft Company. DocVerse is able to combine Google applications such as Google Docs and Zoho with Microsoft office.

It also allows the sharing and editing of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel applications. Google is one of the companies in the world that is strategically placed to disrupt the world of productivity software. The management team of the Google Company is also aiming to combine the DocVerse with other Google applications in order to create a connection between Google Apps and Microsoft Office. Google and Microsoft have been trying hard to outshine one another in the market. Microsoft acknowledged that the idea of Google buying DocVerse was an indication that customers were willing to collaborate with Microsoft office documents (Barney, 1997 pp.

47). Many businesses in the world have adopted the system of using the Microsoft collaboration service as a way of improving operations. Google’s acquisition of DocVerse is the tenth in the last one year. It had previously acquired a photo editing site known as Picnik. It also bought iPhone e-mail application and On2Technologies. In 2009, Google acquired an ad company Teracent, CAPTCHA Test Company and a mobile advertising firm AdMob (Tonkin & Cutroni, 2010 pp 26).

According to the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, the company has plans to be purchasing at least one company per month but at the current trend it might be acquiring more than one company per month.